3RDi

Masisi sends Khama to rehab

Through the government spokesperson, President Mokgweetsi Masisi has essentially called his predecessor, Ian Khama, a dictator. This he did when responding to the dossier that Khama has compiled on the current government and its leaders, notably Masisi. It turns out though that while he has been sniping at Khama for the past four years, at one point calling him authoritarian, Masisi has also taken pro-active steps to cure the former president of authoritarianism. Last week, Masisi’s government sent Khama on an all-expenses-paid trip to Poland. Officially, Khama was attending a “seminar” but the elaborate detail about the trip amply shows that this was actually a rehabilitation programme for authoritarians. The theme of the “seminar” (meaning name of the treatment programme) was “Rolling Back Authoritarianism” and its aim was “to analyse and understand the contemporary rise of authoritarians using populist mobilisation to undermine democratic practices and to discuss how democracy, accountability and the will of the people can be strengthened and defended.” The five-day treatment programme began on June 21 and ended on June 24. Enrolling Khama on this programme was a good thing because all adverse conditions should be cured. What was certainly not good was publicising information about Khama being enrolled on this programme and not providing treatment for those who were traumatised by the authoritarianism in question. Yes, authoritarianism plays itself out publicly as we saw between 2008 and 2018 when Khama was president but treating this condition should be confidential. Now, since Masisi has determined that Khama’s authoritarianism needs to be cured, why is he not paying for the treatment of the 2.4 million people whom that authoritarianism victimised? To borrow an American term, those many people are still suffering from post-stress traumatic disorder from that decade.

We should have copyrighted serobe

American talk-show host, Oprah Winfrey, who is reportedly the richest black woman in the world, sells products developed and patented from the hoodia plant. This plant is indigenous to Southern Africa and it is more likely that the stock that Oprah’s company used to make appetite-suppression patches was from Botswana. In Britain, a shop sells canned seswaa and would likely have patented some aspects of the production process. In the Netherlands, a consultancy firm called Kgotla has developed and patented business management strategies from the kgotla system. Just last week, American scientists announced that they have developed weight-control pills from animal faeces. These “poop pills”, as they have been referred to, were donated by healthy, lean individuals and might be able to balance the digestive systems of obese individuals. The scientists in question are merely reinventing the wheel and it is more likely that the originator of the idea of using poop for pills spent some time in Botswana and was introduced to a traditional delicacy called serobe. Come to think of it, popping poop pills is the exact same thing as eating serobe.

Thieves should learn how to dance

One of the latest caught-thief videos doing the rounds on social media is of a bare-torso young man who happened to have been plying his trade in Tlokweng. He is barefooted and tied up and a group of merrymakers sitting in a circle cheer him on as he reluctantly dances to South African kwaito. For the record, his dance moves won’t earn him a spot on Btv’s Mokaragana programme and it is for that reason that at one point, a man wielding a sjambok whips him. The moral of this story is that if you are going to engage in the business of transferring ownership of valuable property without the consent of people who purchased such property, then you need to be an extremely good dancer. The revellers in the video would have been happy to let the thief go back home woundless if he had executed moves similar to those of Coming Soon, the Democratic Republic of Congo guy who used to dance for Vee. As a matter of fact, Coming Soon could actually open a dance school for thieves to equip/insure them for expeditions that go wrong. In addition to dancing well, petty thieves would greatly benefit from learning how to expertly kiss other men. In another caught-thief from South Africa, a mostly-male crowd of vigilantes orders two thieves to tongue-kiss each other on pain of being thoroughly whipped. One is clearly very uncomfortable but has no choice. Pickpockets typically practise picking pockets and if you choose this career, make sure that you also practise competition-grade dancing as well as tongue-kissing other men and what normally follows the latter. The South African incident portends a future when caught-thief videos will be strictly pornographic.

How to hide UDC wins

If you are an Orange subscriber and run out of airtime, there is an automatic function that invites you to request more airtime on credit and the very last stage features Mandarin script. This seems to be a ploy by the Mandarin-speaking Airtime Credit Manager at Orange Botswana to not sell airtime on credit to non-Mandarin speakers. The Botswana Daily News should also use this ploy for some of its political reporting. When the ruling party wins a by-election, that story will be on the front page. When the Umbrella for Democratic Change wins, the story is, as a matter of policy and practice, hidden on Page 7 with normal-type font for the headline and faint text. If the paper doesn’t want readers to learn about UDC victories, it should write articles about such victories in Mandarin.